Israel's New Prophet

Alarmed by a continuing drought that is endangering their crops, citrus growers in southern Israel have asked the government to allocate more water for irrigation. But water is in short supply throughout the country, and the government is not likely to give more than mere sympathy. Nor can the fruit farmers expect much of a break in the weather. Israeli Meteorologist Leo Krown has predicted that through January, local rainfall will be below normal --and the Brooklyn-born scientist speaks with authority. In each of the past 16 years, he reports in the Journal of Applied Meteorology, his new method for long-range winter rainfall forecasts for the eastern Mediterranean area would have been 100% accurate.

Krown's forecasts--unparalleled since the Biblical Joseph accurately prophesied seven good and seven bad years for Egypt--stem from his observation of an ancient custom among Israel's nomadic Bedouins. After any October in which there is moderate rainfall, the desert wanderers move out of the Negev into more hospitable land. "Early rain," they explain confidently, "means a dry year."

Bedouin Folklore. To check the ancient folklore, Krown examined local rainfall records. They had only been kept since 1924, but since then, at least, Bedouins had been right. Moderate rainfall in October was almost always followed by an exceptionally dry winter. Dry Octobers generally preceded three-month periods of above-normal rainfall. "I felt that if we could understand the weather circulation in October," he says, "it could possibly tell us what was going to happen."

Using the new meteorological data, which weather balloons have been transmitting regularly since 1950, Krown began a study of the October low-pressure areas (troughs) and high-pressure areas (ridges) that he believed affected winter weather in Israel. Gradually a pattern emerged.

Arctic Spillover. Whenever a trough hovered over the eastern Mediterranean in the vicinity of Cyprus during most of October, while another hung over the Atlantic off the coast of Spain (the position of the troughs this year), Israel's rainfall was from 20% to 55% below normal for the next three months. When the Mediterranean trough showed up near Italy during October and the corresponding Atlantic trough was located off the U.S. coast, Israeli winter rainfall was from 20% to 60% above normal. Krown also determined that in each of the three years of normal rainfall during the November-January period, one trough spent much of October over the central Mediterranean between Italy and Crete, while an accompanying trough formed over the mid-Atlantic.

The position and movement of the troughs are significant, says Krown, because they are associated with the streams of cold air that suddenly spill down from the Arctic every October, bringing clouds and rain to herald the change of seasons. "If I am finally proved right," he says, "there ought to be similar findings at similar latitudes." The latitudes he is talking about are between 30DEG and 50DEG north of the equator, which includes the southern part of the U.S., where both agriculture and business could benefit from more accurate long-range weather forecasting.

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